By BURTON BOLLAG
Salamanca, Spain

University leaders from across Europe have called on their governments to speed up moves to make the continent's highly diverse national higher-education systems more similar to one another.
The call came here last week at a meeting involving the heads of universities from virtually every European country, representatives of student and faculty associations, and intergovernmental organizations like the European Union -- a total of 650 people from some 45 countries.
The recommendations from the meeting will go to education ministers and senior officials from 32 European countries, who will meet in Prague in mid-May to advance the process of making the continent's various university systems more compatible.
The recommendations strongly support moves begun recently in a number of European countries to introduce bachelor's and master's degrees in place of a wide variety of existing degree systems; a credit system to help make studies more flexible and to enable students to accumulate credit for academic work accomplished; and so-called diploma supplements, which are designed to explain the program a graduate has completed to academic officials in other countries.
The education leaders who met here also endorsed calls for each country to strengthen -- or in many cases, establish -- its own system of accreditation. Last year, an independent European Network for Quality Assurance was established under the auspices of the European Union. It brings together national agencies or associations concerned with monitoring quality and accrediting institutions or study programs. The purpose is to share ideas and experiences among countries.
Pressure is mounting on the ministers meeting next month in Prague to push those efforts forward by establishing a "European Platform for Accreditation." In addition to national agencies, the proposed body would include representatives of universities, students, and employers. The goal is to eventually allow European countries to recognize each others' degrees, in the same way that institutions in the United States recognize the degrees of colleges accredited by any of the six regional accrediting agencies.
"We must begin cooperating with other countries," said Lars Ekholm, secretary general of the Association of Swedish Higher Education, "so that, for example, we can be confident about Germany's quality-assessment system and they can be confident about ours."
The moves are part of a quiet revolution that is changing the landscape of higher education in Europe. Countries' tertiary-education systems have evolved separately, and the continent has a jumble of mutually incomprehensible and nontransferable degree systems. First degrees vary from three years in Britain to seven years in Italy and Germany. While European political and economic integration have been steaming forward -- a single currency, the Euro, will come into use in 12 countries on January 1 -- until recently there was little support for harmonizing higher education. As a result, it is difficult for a student to get a degree in one country and have it recognized in another, making something of a mockery of the right of European Union citizens to study or work in any other European Union country.
But that has been changing since education ministers and officials from 29 countries signed the so-called Bologna declaration two years ago in that Italian university city. It commits countries to work for "greater compatibility and comparability" of higher-education systems across the continent.
"Students have a need and a right to study for degrees which can be used all over Europe and not just in one little corner," said Guy Haug, a former director general of the European office of the Council on International Education Exchange. At the meeting here, Mr. Haug presented his study on efforts in 35 European countries to move toward that goal. He found that there had been a strong increase in such activity in the last two years, as almost all European countries have begun introducing --- or at least considering -- a system of bachelor's and master's degrees, the so-called European Credit Transfer System, and diploma supplements.
"This process has been an eye-opener," said Mr. Haug. "Countries said, 'We didn't know our degree structure could be a handicap for foreign students, or that our students couldn't get their degrees recognized abroad.'"
The education leaders meeting here stressed that carrying out these reforms rapidly would help European institutions develop stronger reputations internationally. It would also help them compete more effectively for the growing number of foreign students, many from Asia, who choose to invest in study in the West.
"Everybody knows about studying in the United States," said Konrad Osterwalder, rector of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, who moderated the meeting here. "But who in the rest of the world thinks about studying in Europe?"